From WaPo ...

Michael S. Steele, the newly elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, arranged for his 2006 Senate campaign to pay a defunct company run by his sister for services that were never performed, his finance chairman from that campaign has told federal prosecutors.

President Obama gives his support to the new stimulus bill, declaring that "perfect should not be the enemy of the absolutely necessary." Meanwhile, the Republican leadership lines up to indicate that they will still oppose it. That and other political news in today's TPMDC Saturday Roundup.

One of the interesting side lights to the Stimulus Bill fight is that it's given John McCain an angle to get his ego and anger engaged again in the political fray. McCain went on the floor today with a harsh response to President Obama's speech yesterday before the House Democrats.

Why no calls for an up or down vote on the real bill?

So Senate Republicans invoked the threat of a filibuster. And the 'centrist' group has leveraged that threat to add more tax cuts that won't accomplish anything and cut out a lot of spending that would.

As the 'Day in 100 Seconds' diehards among you will have noticed, there was no episode today. That's because it was a special day in TPM land. While the editorial side of things went along more or less as usual today. It was with a skeleton staff, as our real world offices got packed up from the place we've worked out of for the last three years and moved to a new office about eight blocks away.

CNN reports that the Senate has a reached tentative deal for a $780 billion stimulus package.

Late Update: We're getting mixed signals on whether it's a done deal along the lines reported by CNN. Elana Schor reports.

The Coleman campaign has been nothing if not inconsistent during the three-month post-election saga in Minnesota, but nothing quite beats asking the court to now count ballots that the Coleman campaign itself succeeded in getting thrown out just a few weeks ago.

Late Update: Alas, the Coleman campaign has announced that two previously uncounted ballots were found by an election official in one county. It will never end.

Iowa guv turned Ag secretary pushing EPA for more ethanol in gasoline.

Mark Blumenthal looks at whether the stimulus plan is losing public support.

Looks like Harry Reid is telling negotiators on the stimulus bill that if they're going to cut the size of the spending provisions, then they should reduce some of the tax cuts in the bill, too.

Pam Hess reports:

The Obama administration will not prosecute CIA officers who participated in harsh interrogations that critics say crossed the line into torture, CIA Director-nominee Leon Panetta said Friday.

Asked by The Associated Press if that was official policy, Panetta said, "That is the case."

Obama will hit the road next week to sell the stimulus package, with stops in Gary Elkhart, Indiana, and Fort Myers, Florida, Robert Gibbs just announced in the daily press briefing.

It turns out that one of the Bushie burrowers in DOD's Office of Detainee Affairs was heavily involved in the Pentagon Pundits scandal.

A few days I ago, I chatted with Mike Lux, who was most recently a member of the Obama transition team as a liaison to progressives, about his new book, the present opportunity for dramatic change, and Obama's call for post-partisanship:

New polling shows why Obama is happy to make Rush Limbaugh the face of the GOP.

The ongoing financial crisis has done a pretty good job of demonstrating the outright moral decay of much of the financial sector. But sometimes, it's the small-scale, personal stories that are better at conveying that reality. TPMmuckraker's Zack Roth relates one man's horrifying experience with Bank of America.

The good stuff starts at about the 4:30 mark here.

Of all the places you'd be most concerned about Bush political appointees burrowing into career positions, the Pentagon's Office of Detainee Affairs (the folks who oversee Gitmo) would have to be near the top of the list, right?

Elana Schor gives us the state of play on the Senate's stimulus bill.

TPM Reader BW has had it with Mitch McConnell's new gag line that if you spent $1 million every day since the day Jesus was born, you still wouldn't have spent $1 trillion:

This may be maddening and juvenile but Democratic lawmakers have to knock these sound bytes down with their own.

Please, anyone:

"Senator McConnell is flaunting his economic ignorance because if you started the day Jesus was born and created TWENTY million dollars in wealth every day you would have the wealth created in the US economy each year. AND if you flushed TWO million dollars down the toilet every day since Jesus was born you would have the credit losses in the US economy just last year. AND if you flushed THREE million a day, you would have lost less than the money that this recession is projected to cost by the end of next year. We no longer measure boats by cubits and we should not design economic stimulus based on a Jesus' birthday, so will the Minority Leader please either engage in a serious talk about economic policy or step aside and let the adults handle it?"

I haven't checked BW's math, but I think we can safely assume that the numbers are out there to support a riff along these lines, if not this precise one.

Laura Rozen has been doing some bang-up reporting from her new perch at The Cable. Check out her latest on L'Affaire Zinni.

A Senate vote on the stimulus bill could come as early as today -- and if not today, then Sunday. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

The new unemployment numbers are out:

*January job losses: 598,000

*Job losses from Nov-Jan: 1.8 million

*Unemployment rate: 7.6%

*Unemployed workers: 11.6 million

This week, out on the broad wastes of cable news drekdom and the uplands of Beltway journalistic drivel, a simple fact has gone almost entirely unreported: virtually everything congressional Republicans are saying about the Stimulus Bill wouldn't cut it in remedial economics. Not that there aren't legitimate policy differences and criticisms to be made of the outline plan before Congress. But to call the Republican complaints 'policy differences' would be to engage in what that old president used to call the soft bigotry of low expectations, as though a political party with as legitimately proud a history as the GOP could not be expected to produce more than economic illiterates.

The ground under our feet might feel firmer if this were just standard order rhetorical abuse. But the truth of it is genuinely frightening, especially since these fellows are planted in Congress rather than on one of the sidewalk corners in Union Square ranting about Socialism and Fluoride or Lyndon LaRouche.

But now there are some flickering signs that the tide may be turning, perhaps in response to just how nonsensical the conversation got earlier this week. For instance, in tomorrow's Post, business columnist Steven Pearlstein devotes an entire column to the fact most of Republicans on Capitol Hill don't even seem to grasp how a Stimulus Bill is supposed to work or even more basic stuff about demand, recession economics or even how jobs come into existence. As in, it's not a Stimulus Bill, it's a spending bill.

Tactfully, Pearlstein doesn't say explicitly for most of the article that it's Republicans he's talking about. You have to infer that from the names of the members he dings. But toward the end of the piece he can't seem to help cutting to the chase ...

what's striking is that supposedly intelligent people are horrified at the thought that, during a deep recession, government might try to help the economy by buying up-to-date equipment for the people who protect us from epidemics and infectious diseases, by hiring people to repair environmental damage on federal lands and by contracting with private companies to make federal buildings more energy-efficient.

What really irks so many Republicans, of course, is that all the stimulus money isn't being used to cut individual and business taxes, their cure-all for economic ailments, even though all the credible evidence is that tax cuts are only about half as stimulative as direct government spending.

It really does approach flat earth territory.

When you step back from the immediacy of the moment and consider just what nonsense these guys are spouting and what games they're playing while the country is legitimately in danger, it's breathtaking. All the reporters have fallen down on the job. But maybe we can hope for more tide-turning tomorrow.

I don't know how many people saw it. But President Obama gave a great speech defending the Stimulus Bill today at the House Dems retreat. Exactly the case he needs to be making on TV and in some events around the country. We'll try to get full video of it up tomorrow.

Here's the vid.

Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY): The Solis nomination isn't going anywhere for now.

Reich: Senate GOP Playing Politics While Economy Burns

In floor debate this morning on the stimulus bill, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) accused Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) of being "theatrical." He responded by being, well, theatrical:

Oh, the indignation.

New Madoff SEC investigation being run by the same office (and possibly the same investigators) that blew that last Madoff investigation back in 2006 when it might have counted.

Did I mention that Neel Kashkari, the 35 year old, ex-Goldman Sachs VP that Hank Paulson put in charge of TARP, is still over at Treasury running the thing? Matt Cooper looks at who might replace him.

One reader chimes in on the logic of the Collins-Nelson cut list ...

What's most striking about this list is that, for all their carping about this hodgepodge of a bill, the Nelson-Collins group seems to have approached their cuts in an even more haphazard fashion. They're not offering a comprehensive or coherent approach to stimulus spending. They haven't established a fixed standard, against which they're measuring each item. They don't have any sense of how big the overall package needs to be in order to work. They're just canvassing members to find out which items it's politically feasible to remove.

Some of their cuts are sensible - programs that belong in the standard appropriations process. Some are ideological - education aid is an incredibly efficient way to avert a huge number of layoffs, but federal funding for local education is anathema to conservatives. Some are nonsensical - why slash immediate spending on transportation
infrastructure? And that's without getting into what they're not pressing to cut: any number of other items particularly dear to the hearts of influential senators are left alone.

It may be necessary to accept this amendment to secure enough votes for the final measure; it's certainly not worth letting the stimulus fail over this. But Collins and Nelson shouldn't be allowed to trumpet, with false piety, their stand against "sacred cows." What matters most right now is averting economic disaster; the efficacy of individual programs is purely secondary. If Collins and Nelson had a shred of seriousness, they would be proposing the elimination of individual items - and then the substitution of programs they felt would stimulate the economy more efficiently. Where are the substitutes? Or, if they think the bill is bigger than necessary, they could announce a target amount and a rationale for why that lesser amount would work. Where's the target?

This isn't centrism. It's not fiscal conservatism. It's just grandstanding.

Sen. Coleman's lawyers are pushing to include an absentee ballot from a man who voted in Pine County even though he was a resident of another county. Now they're arguing that the ballot should be included because even though the voter lived in a different county, at the time of the election, he was in the Pine County jail.

Late Update: This commenter may see Coleman's angle here: "Maybe he's trying to preserve his franchise once he ends up behind bars."

Later Policy Update: Let me clarify one broader policy point. Many states around the country have laws which take away voting rights from felons even after they've served their time. I'm basically against all those laws. It's actually a big problem because it leaves big swaths of the population permanently disenfranchised. This of course seems to be the more prosaic issue of voting in a county where you don't live, rather than civic disabilities of prisoners, though I admire the guy's diligence in pursuing his civic rights even while he had a lot of other stuff to worry about.

If Larry Summers is trying to assert Dick Cheney-style influence over Obama's economic policy, then wouldn't it be ironic for the new Vice President to be the primary check on Summers' influence? That's the dynamic Chris Hayes sees shaping up.

In the second part of my interview with economist Dean Baker, we talk about the fact that a significant portion of the banking industry is already insolvent and that a much larger portion will be broke before the end of the year. Any discussion of nationalization -- or any denial that we're nationalizing the banks -- needs to start with the premise that if you're not going to let the banks declare bankruptcy then you're nationalizing them at some level.

Who takes the bigger hit: taxpayers or shareholders? It depends on how you do it. Dean Baker explains:

I'm told the group of 'centrist' senators (Collins, Nelson et al.) is meeting at this moment. And the basis of their meeting is a staff paper that was just circulated with a total of $77.9 billion proposed cuts to the existing senate bill.

The biggest hit is on education spending.

A few examples of the recommended cuts ...

$24.786 Billion on "State Stabilization Money"
$15 Billion for "State Incentive Grants"
$6.75 Billion for "IDEA", proposed cut 50%
$6.5 Billion for "Title I Funding", proposed cut 50%

Most of $5 billion from HHS for 'prevention and wellness' programs.

$5.5 Billion "Supplementary Discretionary Grants Program" at HUD Transportation

Click the page below to see the full document ...

Obama: "Washington may not be ready to get serious about energy independence. But I am."

Elana Schor has a post this morning showing the four Senate Republicans who appear to be in play for President Obama on the Stimulus Bill, based on their vote last night on Sen. DeMint's alternative Stimulus Bill. But there's something else last night's vote tells us. There were 36 out of 41 Republican senators who voted to scrap all spending in the Stimulus Bill. All of it.

This approaches flat earth territory in terms of where the economy is right now and what conventional macroeconomics suggests about how to combat the problem.

Late Update: TPM Reader MH ain't happy ...

I study neanderthals! Don't insult them by associating them with Republicans. They survived ice ages and tens of thousands of years in the wilderness; with stone tools. The Republican Party couldn't do that!

I'm starting to get the sense that Larry Summers is to economic policy in the Obama Administration what Dick Cheney was to national security policy in the Bush Administration.

Obama's executive pay restrictions are a "joke." Senate is still looking at adding teeth to them.

The AP is dashing the hopes of millions, claiming copyright infringement for Shepard Fairey's iconic Obama "Hope" poster. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

A reader chimes in ...

I don't share the sense of panic expressed by some Obama supporters over his approach to the stimulus package. If the campaign taught us anything, it's that Obama is willing to invest in strategies that only yield dividends in the long term. I suspect his careful cultivation of the GOP side of the aisle is closely akin to his caucus strategy; it may require a lot of time and effort before it produces a payoff, but if he can pick off votes and limit rancor, it will be well worth the investment.

But I have been surprised that Obama has not done more to make his case directly to voters. Creative and constant communication was always a hallmark of his campaign. Its website, for example, featured a tax calculator, with which voters could find out just how much they would save. Why isn't there a similar site now, so that Americans can see what Obama wants to give them, and what every Republican just voted against?

Or how about a little java applet that can take in a ZIP Code and spit out an estimate of the number of jobs the package will create or save within fifty miles? Or a ticker of e-mails sent to Congress in support of the bill?

The downside to overwhelming popularity is that it can produce a false sense of confidence. Electoral support can never be assumed; it must constantly be pursued. Conducting five sit-down interviews is a nice first step. But it's not enough. Obama should be using every available outlet to take his case directly to voters, to illustrate to them just how this package stands to impact their lives - and he hasn't. That's my
real frustration.

The reader's point about the long view is well-taken. Obama's mix of steel and patience are two of his key virtues.

But I have been surprised that he has not chosen yet to play more to, and get out among, his real constituency -- particularly on this bill -- the people. This is about them. 10 or 15 thousand people are losing their jobs every day at the moment. Half a million people a month. It would not be hard to find -- and I can't believe they're not thinking about it already -- lots of communities around the country where some version of this bill would provide critical, immediate and sustained relief to lots of people. In fact, you'd likely find one almost anywhere you put your finger down on the map.

When political battles are entirely bounded by Pennsylvania Avenue, back and forths between the White House and the Hill, presidents can become just one player among many, cut off from their real source of power. And the whole nature of the debates can get rapidly disconnected from the realities actually people are experiencing in the country. Presidents are powerful when they have a national constituency behind them. Washington is a dark place, eager to trip all this up.

Seems a federal grand jury is investigating former Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) and senior Bush White House aides on possible charges of obstruction of justice tied to the firing of then-US Attorney David Iglesias.

Sen. Coburn (R-OK) introduces amendment to prevent any money from the Stimulus Bill being spent on "zero-gravity chairs" or "rotating pastel lights."

Coleman lawyer pleads for another forger's ballot to be entered into Coleman's pile.

This time it's even better. The guy in question apparently forged a ballot for his wife. So Coleman admits he's probably not entitled to that one. But he's holding out for the forger's own ballot.

There is so much fog and uncertainty -- much of it intentionally injected into the debate -- about the different moving parts of the Stimulus Bill. But some of the broad outlines are arresting and straightforward.

We're hearing all this talk about the staggering size of the bill. And it is a staggering amount of money. But according to Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the amount of demand that the financial crisis is pulling out the economy is likely to be between $1.1 and $1.2 trillion this year (and that is not a controversial estimate). The Stimulus Bill (which, remember, is $800+ billion over two years) would try to compensate for that drop off with about $400 billion of spending and tax cuts. How efficiently the money is spent, how quickly and so forth -- all very good questions. But judged in these terms you start to see how the real question is whether any bill of that size is enough.

David Kurtz and Baker discuss the issue in today's episode of TPMtv.

From Theda Skocpol ...

In response to what you are saying: Obama is, sadly, much to blame for giving the Republicans so much leverage. He defined the challenge as biparitsanship not saving the U.S. economy. Right now, he has only one chance to re-set this deteriorating debate: He needs to give a major speech on the economy, explain to Americans what is happening and what must be done. People will, as of now, still listen to him -- and what else is his political capital for?

Speaking as a strong Obama supporter who put my energies and money into it, I am now very disillusioned with him. He spent the last two weeks empowering Republicans -- including negotiating with them to get more into Senate and his administration and giving them virtual veto-power over his agenda -- and also spending time on his personal cool-guy image (as in interview before the Super Bowl). The country is in danger and he ran for president to solve this crisis in a socially inclusionary way. He should be fighting on that front all the time with all his energies -- and he certainly should give a major speech to help educate the public and shape the agenda. That is the least he can and should do. Only that will bypass the media-conserative dynamic that is now in charge.

Yes, a palpably insane idea. But Craig Crawford at CQ is suggesting it. And in the current climate of completely whacked decision-making, perhaps it could actually happen?

Behind all the back and forth over the Stimulus Bill is a simple fact: the debate in Washington is rapidly moving away from any recognition that the US economy -- and the global economy, for that matter -- is in free-fall. The range of outcomes stretches from severe recession to something closer to a replay of the Great Depression, though that label is perhaps better seen as a placeholder for 'catastrophic economic collapse' since the underlying place of the US economy in the world economy is very different from what it was in 1929. This reality was palpable in the political debate until as recently as a few weeks ago. But Republicans are using a strategy of conscious denial to push it off the stage.

Take stock of the last few weeks and you can almost visualize the two conversations -- path toward economic calamity and debate over Stimulus Bill -- diverging.

The other key into the current debate is that the Republican position is ominously similar to their position on global warming or, for that matter, evolution. The discussion of what to do on the Democratic side tracks more or less with textbook macroeconomics, while Republican argument track either with tax cut monomania or rhetorical claptrap intended to confuse. It's true that macro-economics doesn't make controlled experiments possible. And economists can't speak to these issues with certainty. But in most areas of our lives, when faced with dire potential consequences, we put our stock with scientific or professional consensus where it exists, as it does here. Only in cases where it goes against Republican political interests or economic interests of money-backers do we prefer the schemes of yahoos and cranks to people who study the stuff for a living.

Of course, at some level, why would Republicans be trying to drive the country off a cliff? Well, not pretty to say, but they see it in their political interests. Yes, the DeMints and Coburns just don't believe in government at all or have genuinely held if crankish economic views. But a successful Stimulus Bill would be devastating politically for the Republican party. And they know it. If the GOP successfully bottles this up or kills it with a death of a thousand cuts, Democrats will have a good argument amongst themselves that Republicans were responsible for creating the carnage that followed. But the satisfaction will have to be amongst themselves since as a political matter it will be irrelevant. The public will be entirely within its rights to blame Democrats for any failure of government action that happened while Democrats held the White House and sizable majorities in both houses of Congress.

I think it's understandable, though unfortunate in terms of the future of the country and the interests of justice, that Sen. Gregg (R-NH) made it a condition of his accepting the Commerce appointment that he'd be replaced by a Republican. But now comes word that he's recusing himself from any votes on the Stimulus Bill.

Note that in this case a recusal amounts to a no vote since the Dems will likely need 60 votes to overcome a Republican filibuster. And now he's unavailable to provide one.

Right-wing stooges push bogus 'Obama cutting defense budget' story.

Please note that here I'm using "stooge" in the technical, descriptive sense, not meaning any disparagement beyond the facts of the matter.

The GOP races Joe the Plumber to Capitol Hill for private advice on how to save themselves. That and the day's other news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

It occurred to me while reading Politico's interview with Dick Cheney, that the GOP's plan to regain political viability in the short term rests on two disaster scenarios: the failure of the financial rescue efforts (stimulus, TARP, and other bailouts) to stave off complete economic collapse and a new mass casualty terrorist attack -- both of which they are positioning themselves to blame Obama for.

Without one of those two, they have to figure it's going to be a long time wandering in the political wilderness. Now think about the curdling effect, the blight on the soul that comes with rooting for such disasters to befall your country. The rot is now eating at the party's very core.

Bank Rescue Would Entail Triage for Troubled Assets

With everything else that's going on, I'm sure glad we're building this moronic border fence.

Coleman tries to use the Bush v. Gore decision to wrangle his way back into the senate. Doesn't work.

One of our longtime conservative faves, Barbara Comstock, is taking what seems like a step down to run for the Virginia House of Delegates. We recount some of her career highlights, from the anti-Clinton glory days to the Scooter Libby legal defense fund.

I've learned that it's important to speak to people in their own language. And earlier today, as you've seen, I noted Sen. Thune's explanation of the problems with the president's Stimulus Bill judged on the basis of how high the number of dollars would be if you stacked them on top of each other. (Thune pegs the dollar number at $1 trillion by adding the estimated interest on the borrowed dollars over time.)

So what we've done here is do an apples to apples comparison of current unemployment numbers to the stimulus spending number using the Thune Stacking Formula as a basis of comparison. Here we have dollars stacked on top of each other versus current number of unemployed Americans stacked on top of each other.

Honestly, I'm not sure I yet understand the logic of stacking as a point of comparison. But this is my effort to reach out and work in a bipartisan framework.

Late Update: This post inspired by an email from TPM Reader JD.

Ya gotta sell it.

Bob Reich: Tom Daschle and the Populist Revolt

NH Gov picks Republican Bonnie Newman as Judd Gregg's replacement.

The investigation into possible pay-to-play in New Mexico state government last month derailed Bill Richardson's bid to be Commerce Secretary. Now, investigators have requested correspondence between Richardson's office and the Democratic Governors Association, for which Richardson was vice-chair during the period at issue. Has the DGA been subpoenaed in connection with the probe? It won't say.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

Sen. Bond (R-MO): Mass transit investment isn't stimulus.

From TPM Reader BD ...

I don't think there's any question now - the Republicans are building up as intense an offense as they can to permanently damage Obama and the Democrats in Congress. Looking over all the stories - Republicans uniting against the stimulus bill, McCain joining in, the piling on against Daschle, the insistance that "bipartisanship" means Democratic capitulation - it's clear they want to hurt the Dems as critically as possible. They've been wounded and, well, you know what they say about wounded animals. They're dangerous. These creeps would gladly take down the country to damage the Dems for their own party - just like they did with Clinton's impeachment.

There's no reason to wait. It's time to fight back - intensely and relentlessly. I want to see Obama's political database pulled out NOW to beat back the Repubs. Just tell all 3 million of us who donated to his campaign who we should telephone, e-mail, visit, blog about, whatever. I'll gladly take part in overrunning Mitch McConnell or John McCain's offices with reminders that they lost the election and are now obviously harming the country for their own purposes.

All about Mitch's Millions.

Baucus: "I've got some ideas" on who should run HHS now that Daschle's out. But he's not saying who.

It would strike me as very out of character for Obama. But at least among emailers there's a groundswell for Howard Dean.

What he says happened ...

Administration sources insist this was Daschle's decision alone. That was certainly the line from Robert Gibbs at the podium Tuesday A source close to Daschle says "he didn't have the stomach for the fight." The double-barreled combination of a blistering New York Times editorial and a front-page story raising questions about President Obama's commitment to ethics reform in Washington convinced Daschle he had to go.

Already depressed by the recent discovery that his younger brother is stricken with brain cancer, Daschle wasn't prepared for another week of Senate hazing and damaging headlines.

And, he didn't want to hurt his friend, Barack Obama.

Late Update: On the other hand, this passage, from a little further down in George's piece strikes me as more than a tad overwrought ...

As sad as he and Daschle's network of White House friends are about his withdrawal, they know how much damage this has done to Obama's reputation. The Administration was appearing to set one standard for its allies, and another for the rest of Washington.

Has the Democratic Governors Association been subpoenaed as part of the federal criminal investigation into the pay-to-play allegations in New Mexico that derailed the Richardson nomination?

The DGA declined to tell the Albuquerque newspaper, so we gave it a try. The group -- which is currently chaired by Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer (and whose executive director happens to be Tom Daschle's son Nathan) -- basically stiffed us, too. Zack Roth reports.

Just heard Mitch McConnell again in his senate press conference. Let's make sure we understand the Republican position. Tax cuts are far less efficient as stimulus than spending. In other words, they save fewer jobs. But McConnell apparently wants all tax cuts and no spending. He didn't seem that extreme even a few days ago. But now that's where he is. In other words, no jobs bill.

So how many millions of Americans have to lose their jobs for Mitch McConnell's political gambit?

"I wish Tom Daschle had not decided to withdraw his nomination for Secretary of Health and Human Services. While Tom's decision is a reminder of his loyalty to President Obama and his determination not to be a distraction, this was no ordinary appointment and today is not a good day for the cause of health care reform. Tom brought a unique level of legislative skill and experience to this position in addition to his passion to achieve affordable health care for every American. Tom made it very clear he'd made a mistake and he took responsibility for it. I believe that when the smoke clears and the frenzy has ended, no one will believe that this unwitting mistake should have erased thirty years of selfless public service and remarkable legislative skill and expertise on health care. I know Tom Daschle well. I know his integrity and I respect his heart for this cause, and I know Tom will find other ways to contribute to this central mission."

McCain signs on with the Neo-Hooverites.

The White House is confirming that Tom Daschle has withdrawn his nomination as secretary of HHS.

Matt Cooper has more.

Sen. Thune (R-SD) explains Republican thinking about the economic crisis ...

Country's on the precipice. And idiots like this are holding the floor.

Late Update: A Hill staffer chimes in ...

Putting aside how superficial the argument is, Thune's visual aid is really a fascinating example of how little Republicans in the Senate actually understand "regular folks." They think they need a visual aid so that people realize ONE TRILLION DOLLARS is a lot of money. I don't know anyone who doesn't think that's a lot of money.

I've been hollering for days about this or that Republican's picayune complaints about the Stimulus Bill -- either line items for minuscule dollar amounts or bogus complaints about spending items that demonstrably will create lots of jobs and improve the economy over the long term. And now, according to the Post, President Obama is "frustrated by the public perception that the recovery bill was becoming laden with partisan pet projects."

The good news for the country and President Obama is that Obama remains extremely popular, the Stimulus Bill is pretty popular and the Democrats have big majorities in both houses of Congress. So there's little doubt his bill will pass Congress in something like its current form.

But there also shouldn't be much question why Republicans are having such a field day spreading disinformation and simple nonsense about this bill. We've heard virtually nothing over the last couple weeks about the big issue, which is that the economy is in severe free-fall because of a once-in-a-century financial crisis. And because of that, the federal government needs to step in with big short term spending to create jobs to see us through the crisis. Those jobs are needed in the short-term to prevent unemployment from getting out of hand and in the longer term to reshape the economy so that we're not dependent on recurrent bubbles to keep the economy afloat. This is an emergency jobs bill. And it costs a lot of money because we're in a deep crisis. But this basic point has disappeared almost entirely from the public debate.

ThinkProgress has admirably demonstrated that the cable networks continue to tip the scales in favor of Republicans by booking like twice or even three times as many Republicans as Democrats to discuss the Stimulus Bill. But that only tells us what we already know, which is that the Washington press establishment is still wired for Republicans. But there is a Democratic president. And he does have the bully pulpit. And he needs to make this argument, which he's not. Absent that, we can't be surprised and the Democrats are not in much of a position to complain if the vacuum is filled by a bunch of Republicans making statements that are either demonstrable nonsense or just lies.

Look at what people are talking about and you wouldn't get the sense that we're actually in the midst of a major economic crisis that will likely send unemployment well into double digits if nothing is done quickly -- and a crisis that is in large measure the result of the economic policies that the Boehners and Cantors and McConnells are telling us, all the evidence to the contrary, will now save us. Everyone who's taking this situation seriously realizes that spending is the pivotal part of what the government needs to do to stabilize the economy in the face of this crisis. The multipliers for spending versus tax cuts simply leaves no question about that. Ask McCain economic advisor Mark Zandi. The solid critiques from the right aren't about whether spending is needed but which types are most efficient.

Without a clear argument about why this whole exercise is necessary, it's inevitable that the debate will be ground down to the inconsequential minutiae which is the aim of its opponents. Big things need a president to argue for them.

Nor should we think there's no issue just as long as the bill itself gets passed, which seems likely. To paraphrase Woody Allen in Annie Hall, a political movement is like a shark: to live it has to keep moving forward. Or more aptly, to paraphrase another immortal, Bob Dylan: political movements not being born are busy dying. The campaign isn't over. November 5th was just a big hurdle. The arguments still have to be made for the direction we want to take the country. We need the big picture or we'll run again on distractions and the efforts of discredited malefactors.

Sen. Feingold's statement praising the nomination of Judd Gregg, which was just announced in a White House press conference, but deploring the way it was done:

"But the apparent behind-the-scenes deal-making that went on to determine who will fill Senator Gregg's vacancy is alarmingly undemocratic. Once again, Americans will be represented in the Senate for nearly two years by someone they had no hand in electing. As the number of Senators appointed to their seats continues to rise, it's increasingly clear that we need to fix this constitutional anachronism. It is time to pass a constitutional amendment to end appointments by governors and the political gamesmanship they encourage."

Feingold has introduced a constitutional amendment to take away the power of governors to fill Senate vacancies and vest that power in the voters via a special election.

Presidents need to think big, isolate the source of problems and act to fix them. So I think Obama needs to abolish the IRS so his appointees can get confirmed and his program move forward.

Obama will announce his pick of Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) as Commerce secretary at an 11 a.m. ET press conference this morning. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

In an interview with TPMmuckraker, Karl Rove's attorney says his client will cooperate with Nora Dannehy's criminal investigation into the U.S. attorney firings and has already spoken with investigators conducting the internal DOJ probe into whether the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman was politically motivated.

CBO says 78% of the Stimulus Bill will hit the economy over two years.

It gets better. The latest from RNC Chair Michael Steele: "Not in the history of mankind has the government ever created a job."

This is such transparent nonsense it's hard to know where to start; but I guess it builds on the DeMint nonsense. Has Steele ever heard of government road building? Defense spending? NASA? We don't even need to get into the many ways that government spending on many things has spin-off effects in terms of heightened economic productivity either because of technological innovation or transportation efficiencies, or whatever. How we doing on the spending on research and initial deployment that created the Internet?

Wolf Blitzer was doing the interview. I guess he didn't realize this is a false statement? I'm worried about Wolf. He needs some help.

"Not a Stimulus bill. It's just a spending bill." That was Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) just a few moments ago on Fox.

There are obviously very basic disagreements between Democrats and Republicans on this issue, which is fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But I think of all the Republicans I've heard making nonsensical points about this bill, Sen. DeMint (R-SC) is running way ahead of every other competitor, certainly ahead of any other senator.

A short DeMint wish-list.

Can someone point out to me any case where an interviewer presses DeMint on the point that stimulus bills are by definition spending bills. Please someone send me this link or a time when it happens on TV. You're trying to counter the drop off in the demand that is causing the recession.

I'm told DeMint isn't a dolt, which is hard to tell from recent TV appearances, just an anti-government radical who thinks the government shouldn't take any role in trying to cushion the effects of economic downturns or having any policy response to possible economic catastrophes. But really, he's getting a crazy free ride here.

Obama, Biden, Schiliro working the phones for Daschle.

Fmr. Sen. Coleman's lawyer appears to be laying the groundwork for arguing that Al Franken's margin of victory is smaller than the inherent margin of error in the election contest itself. Ergo, the margin's so close they need to scrap Al's win and hold a completely new election.

Some problems staffing out Treasury?

More seriously, it's not so much who's confirmed: Geithner just got confirmed himself. But my sense is that Treasury's significantly behind other departments in having top appointees nominated.

The upshot of this weekend's provincial elections in Iraq is that support swung toward parties of secular nationalism, who support centralized power, at the expense of sectarian and/or more regionally minded parties favoring a weak central government. Juan Cole has a good run-down of the particulars.

So what is Tom Daschle accused of doing? We break down the individual items here.

Is someone in the Senate trying to sneak funding for the "clean-coal," "near zero emissions" FutureGen project in Illinois into the stimulus package?

I'm watching Andrea Mitchell interview David Broder in what's amounting to a sort of parody of High Broderism. But setting aside the unsupported a priori assumption that a bill with input from both parties is necessarily better than a bill put forward by a single party, he just said that this Stimulus Bill is a big risk because we already had one Stimulus Bill (i.e., TARP) and it didn't work:

(ed.note: A few readers say they think Broder was referring to last year's tax rebate law. I guess that's possible. Watch the video and judge for yourself. If he's referring to that, his error would not be as bad as I say below, though it would still be a bad comparison since that was 100% tax rebate rather than a bill heavily weighted toward spending. -- jmm)

Now, I think there's a legitimate debate about the effectiveness of TARP. My own take, by no means definitive or fully informed, is that on balance it helped arrest the collapse in the financial system. It was poorly managed. Treasury cut very poor deals on behalf of the taxpayers. And I suspect that in one form or another, we're going to have to spend a lot more money to stabilize the finance sector.

But it wasn't a stimulus bill. A stimulus bill -- though a pretty amorphous catch-phrase -- is either spending or tax cuts (usually spending, since it's more efficient) to put extra demand into the economy during a recession. TARP was an effort to recapitalize the banking sector. End of story. It wasn't a stimulus bill. Nor is this just a semantic point since he's leveraging his own error as evidence for the perils involved in enacting this legislation.

This is such an elementary point that you really have to wonder why Broder's being allowed to go on TV.

All about the GOP rump in the South: Shelby says he wants to filibuster the Stimulus Bill.

Obama promises "independent board" to monitor the bailout.

Republicans say they want a Palin future for the GOP.

As I mentioned over the weekend, I've seen a lot of Republicans on TV complaining that spending programs that demonstrably do create jobs do not create jobs, like buying new and more energy efficient vehicles for government workforces, etc. But where I've really seen the press dropping the ball is doing some simple arithmetic on the spending items Republicans say constitute the wasteful spending in the bill.

Now, the tell in my eyes is that almost all the criticisms I've heard are about budget items in the millions. And when you're talking about a bill with over $800 billion in spending, you just have a hard time getting to any substantial percentage of the total spend with such relatively small items.

Now, here's a representative list from Rep. LoBiondo (R) of New Jersey ...

$1.9 billion for high-level physics research;

$1.5 billion for universities to improve their biomedical research programs;

$600 million for the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to purchase new satellites to improve weather forecasts;

$600 million to buy new cars for federal government workers, adding to the existing inventory of 640,000 vehicles; and,

$335 million for education and prevention programs regarding sexually transmitted diseases.

Separate criticism has been directed at $75 million for smoking cessation plan.

Set aside whether you think these line items are worthwhile. (And it seems obvious to me that it's good for the economy to buy more vehicles for the government fleet, when our auto industry is cratering and demand for cars is flatlining.) But just add those up and you get a total -- $3.51 5.01 Billion -- out of $819 Billion.

The pretty simple fact here is that the Republicans are not willing or able to criticize any of the substantial amounts of spending in this bill. They're focused on a few tiny parts of it. And too few people are pointing out that these amount to maybe one or two percent of the program total.

Last week the House of Representatives passed the $800 billion-plus stimulus package, but without a single Republican vote of support. This week the bill goes to the Senate for consideration. It's sure to be just as intense a debate as last week's, and for a preview we turn to a roundup of the Sunday morning talk shows ...

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

We're going to have more on this shortly. But as this political battle over Daschle unfolds, it's critical to remember that Daschle has been a critical figure for Obama for some time. Well, before there was any discussion of building a cabinet or even starting a longshot presidential bid. Daschle lost his seat in the same election Obama entered the senate -- 2004. And as Daschle was closing up shop, a number of his key staffers went over to Obama to get his senate operation started, most notably Daschle's former Chief of Staff, Peter Rouse. Rouse is now an Obama 'Senior Advisor' whose office is just a few steps down from the Oval Office.

Whatever you make of the substance of the tax and lobbying issues threatening Daschle's nomination, I think it will take quite a lot for Obama to pull the plug on his nomination.

Mitch McConnell signaled yesterday that some kind of deal is in place that would allow President Obama to pick Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) as Commerce secretary without costing the GOP a Senate seat, even though New Hampshire has a Democratic governor who would appoint Gregg's successor:

This just doesn't smell right, on several levels.

The DCCC is running radio ads against 28 House Republicans who voted against the stimulus plan. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

There are some numbers I'd like to put together and I need your help to do it. I'm looking for every specific instance of wasteful, unnecessary or inefficient spending members of Congress have criticized in the Senate or House versions of the stimulus bill. I'm not talking about generic criticisms but rather specific line items such as the funds for contraceptives, research on STDs, refurbishing various buildings on the National Mall, etc. My sense is there aren't many more than half a dozen that are getting the lion's share of attention. And I'm not sure there's more than a dozen that are getting much attention at all. But I want to pull together the examples. So I'd be greatly obliged if you can send in emails with citations and links to specific articles noting the programs and the dollar amounts.

I cannot say my expectations were high. But Sen. DeMint (R) of South Carolina does seem to be an even bigger ignoramus than I'd realized. On This Week this morning he actually said: "Let's don't say it's a stimulus when it's a government spending plan." A 'Stimulus plan' is pretty much by definition a spending plan, though of course it can include tax reductions as well.

As noted, my expectations are not high. But I'm wowed by the amount of nonsense and lies that are being injected into this debate.

Also, high on the list, of course, is the fact that basically all the 'wasteful' spending that's being discussed amounts to a total of what ... maybe 2 or 3 billion out of $819 billion total? Why is this point not being made more clearly?

Tom Daschle reportedly didn't tell the Obama team about his tax problems until weeks after he was named as Health and Human Services Secretary. That and other political news in today's TPMDC Sunday Roundup.

From the AP ...

Allies of Iraq's U.S.-backed prime minister appeared Sunday to have made gains in the provincial elections, rewarding groups credited with reining in insurgents and militias, according to unofficial projections.

Initial results from Saturday's landmark voting are not expected for days. But reports by Iraqi media and interviews by The Associated Press suggest candidates backing Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had strong showings in the crucial Shiite heartland in southern Iraq.

If the indications prove true, it would strengthen al-Maliki's hand ahead of national elections later this year and reflect a shift away from the more religious parties dominating the country.

Notable that on Superbowl Sunday the most compelling sports story of the day (and beyond) has nothing to do with football.